When Did Church Become an Event?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has waxed and now, hopefully, is beginning to wane, what was once just an unsettling undercurrent in Western church life has come to a boil and is now threatening to overflow into open conflict. Such conflict is already a reality in several congregations.

Various factions are forming over the issue of “reopening,” “regathering,” or whatever trendy term we want to use to describe the resumption of in-person Sunday morning worship services. And church people are everywhere on the spectrum regarding this issue. A few are calling other brothers and sisters who are not as cautious as they are unbelieving murderers. Many others wish to exercise a gentler caution. There are those who want to honor the governing authorities. But then there is the camp that does not feel there is much risk and wants to meet again as soon as possible. Still others want to obey God rather than man and meet regardless of any imposed guidelines. And then there are the few who are even crying persecution and are ready to take up arms to defend their rights (which, by the way, is not how the truly persecuted church has ever responded).

There are a lot of reasons behind the swirling emotions and rhetoric—nationalistic syncretism, consumer-driven ecclesiology, paranoid delusions, naked fear, cold logic, warm concern for others, to name a few. (Just ask the people at other spots on the spectrum, and they will be happy to tell you your motives.) But one of the factors that trouble me the most is the disturbing notion that many people see church as an event these days.

We tend to anachronistically read our context into the New Testament passages that talk about believers gathering, failing to note that more often than not, such gatherings took place in homes, not massive buildings with steeples, smoke machines, coffee bars, or witty sayings on their notice boards. This is not to say that massive, regular meetings of believers in buildings designed specifically for that purpose is unbiblical. But it is to say that such practices in such facilities are expedients and not a requirement of the faith.

The greatest example of this anachronistic hermeneutic is Hebrews 10:25. It ranges in translation from “Let us not give up meeting together” to “Not forsaking the assembly.” This is the prooftext that defends the notion that we must resume Sunday morning worship services by any means possible as quickly as we can. We are disobeying, or, at the least, disappointing God if we do not meet in our buildings on Sunday mornings.

Such a reading makes the twin errors of failing to understand the occasion of Hebrews and reading our context into it. The writer of Hebrews addressed his letter to Jews who had turned to Christ but who were now on the verge of turning back away from Jesus due to intense persecution on the part of their fellow non-Christian Jews-some of them their own flesh and blood! To make matters worse, they were being excommunicated from their local synagogues. The synagogue was much more than just a place of worship; it was the cultural community center of Jewish people in whatever place they found themselves. These Jewish Christians had taken to avoiding meeting with other Jewish Christians out of fear of being discovered and thrown out of their ethnic communities and family households.

Also, note the reason the writer issues the mandate not to give up meeting together. They are to gather to encourage one another, not to placate God or earn his favor. We must also remember that he was not writing during a pandemic in which all large gatherings were prohibited on the basis of preserving life. And he was not writing in an age when technology such as livestreaming and videoconferencing was not only possible but easily accessible by most of his readership.

When we casually read Hebrews 10:25 through our eyes rather than the original audience’s eyes, we picture people finding more important things to do-like sleeping in, going to the lake, or heading to a football game-rather than showing up at a large public worship center in a country where it is free to do so and family members aren’t likely to disown them if they do.

To the writer of Hebrews (and to the rest of the New Testament writers), the church was a people he encouraged to stay together, stay focused on Jesus, and to stay on mission. It was not an event he was trying to promote.

I get the appeal of making church an event rather than a community of people who trust in Jesus and who are trying to live out his mission. When we make church an event, we can measure our fidelity to the cause much more accurately and with far less personal effort. If I’m there “every time the doors are open,” I’m a good Christian. When we make church an event, it is easier to judge who is in and who is out. When we make church an event, those of us in ministry can count success by the numbers of butts in pews rather than the depth of the people we are discipling to make more disciples. And when we make church an event, we can compartmentalize our faith, limiting it to an hour each week on Sunday (or three hours per week, counting Sunday school and our small group) and keep the rest of our day-to-day life under our own will and direction.

If that is the mindset, I can see why people are getting antsy as the doors to our public houses of worship remain closed during the pandemic.

Church was never intended to be an event. Church has always been a community of people who trust in Jesus and who seek to live out his mission.

I will be the first one to say that there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction with other believers. Doing ministry behind a screen has some serious limitations. I believe Sunday morning worship gatherings ought to be a little picture of what heaven will be like—God’s people gathered in true community in his presence, enjoying the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb, and giving him praise and honor as they celebrate life and intimacy with one another and with God. It’s a little hard to look at two dozen little Zoom feeds on my screen and get that kind of foreshadowing, or to watch a livestream on my phone and feel like I’m part of something much bigger than myself. But right now, it will do. It’s not ideal, but Sunday morning gatherings are not ideal, either. They are to serve as a foreshadowing of the ideal—heaven.

If the argument is being made to re-whatever as soon as possible because of bad hermeneutics and faulty theology, I have just one thing to say.

Stop. 

Jesus didn't die so we would gather in big buildings on Sunday mornings. He died so that we could be together with him and with one another for all eternity.

Grace and peace.

Photo credit: "Admit One" by Quack712 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Celebrate the Feast

One of the few distinctions between my “tribe’s” expression of the faith (the American Restoration, or Stone-Campbell Movement) and the rest of the greater Protestant Evangelical world is our emphasis on the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper every Sunday.

In this blog, I do not want to get into the frequency of the Lord’s Supper. I believe there is freedom in our frequency (and that perhaps weekly isn’t even often enough). What I want to look at today is the purpose of the Lord’s Supper as I know it, the spirit in which we ought to participate in it, and the benefits of doing so.

My very first experience of the Lord’s Supper was dark, somber, individualistic, and, well, confusing. I am not so sure that as an outsider, confusion was not an inappropriate reaction. In the early church, those who had not yet made a decision for Jesus and had it confirmed through baptism were banned from this part of the worship gathering. There should be some element of mystery to the Lord’s Supper that outsiders should encounter.

But dark, somber, and individualistic? It reminded me more of a funeral than it did the past and future feasts the Lord’s Supper commemorates and foreshadows. And even funeral dinners have smiles and laughter. This had none of that.

Sadly, this is how many churches within the Stone-Campbell Movement “celebrate” the Lord’s Supper. I believe the reason is threefold: an unawareness and misunderstanding of Scripture, the Protestant movement’s lack of confessional liturgy, and a disproportionate emphasis on the death of Jesus during the event itself. Allow me to explain.

TABLE MANNERS

Above all else, God’s story of salvation history within the Bible is his pursuit of restored communion with his creation. Communion is the act of sharing, having something in common, participating in one another’s life and story. From eternity, the Godhead had this communion within itself—the perichoresis (infinite, interlocked, intermingled “dancing”) of Father, Son, and Spirit. Desiring to share this kind of communion with someone outside of the Godhead, the triune God created man. The Genesis account shares with us the incredible experience of God and Adam walking side by side through the garden—in communion.

Of course, things went awry. Man rebelled. He and all creation were cursed. Communion was severed between God and man, between man and his fellow, and between man and creation itself. But God wasn’t content to let it stay that way. The rest of the Scriptures unfold God’s great plan of renewing that original communion.

Through the season of election, God called people to be his representatives, starting with Abraham and the patriarchs, culminating in the people of Israel, and the later remnant. And then, through the redemption, or “buying back” of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God calls all of mankind back to him. But things are finished quite yet. Those of us who answer that call live in the “now and not yet” as we eagerly await the renewal of all things and perfect communion with God, with one another, and with God’s created order.

Throughout God’s story of salvation, he has operated by establishing covenants with his people. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. In this case, it is the greater (God) offering terms to the lesser (mankind). To establish and seal a covenant, something must be sacrificed at an altar. It is a means of ensuring fidelity to the terms of the deal. When covenants are established, Scripture makes it clear that when at the time and place of sacrifice (the altar), it is appropriate to experience sadness, to make penance, to give confession, and to seek forgiveness.

Not so at the table. The table is where the covenantal meal, the feast, takes place, Feasts commemorate and celebrate the covenant. God, the overseer of the covenant, is present at the table as his people’s host. Throughout Scripture, the table is a place where the most intimate human interactions outside of the marriage bed take place. In Scripture, the table is marked by joy, intimacy, community, celebration, and gratitude.

Jesus came to restore the joy, intimacy, community, celebration, and gratitude that the Fall and its curse stole from man. How telling it is that over 20% of Luke’s Gospel records Jesus dining at the table with the people around him! Jesus wasn’t at the table because he struggled with overeating like I do. He was there because he wanted to know and be known by the people around him.

The amazing thing about the Lord’s Supper is that it not only reminds us of the establishment and sealing of the covenant between God and us (Jesus’ sacrifice and our baptism into it), but it also points forward to the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant (the renewal of all things kicked off by the great wedding feast of the Lamb)! And what’s more, we are powerfully reminded that Jesus is Emmanuel—God-with-us. This is what is called anamnesis and prolepsis, a participation of the past and anticipation of the future as we are made more aware of God’s presence in the present.

All too often I have witnessed in our churches an overemphasis of the altar aspect of our covenant. As someone once said, “We tend to leave Jesus on the cross at communion.” And that’s sad. We can never move the table out from under the shadow of the cross, but we dare not leave Jesus there. He is with us in the present and is preparing a place and a feast for us in the future! 

Which does our practice of the Lord’s Supper resemble more?

ALTAR	TABLE
Solemn Individual Sorrow Remorse Introspective Penance Focused on Cost	Celebrative Communal Joy Thanksgiving Interactive Commitment Focused on Presence

DON’T LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to the spirit in which the Lord’s Supper should be celebrated stems from three verses in the Bible combined with Protestantism’s traditional dislike of tradition (yes, enjoy the irony). The three verses are 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself (ESV).

Taken by themselves, it is easy to see why these verses make for a very somber, serious, individualistic, and introspective experience. However, we must look at them in their context. The Apostle Paul is taking the Corinthian church to task earlier in the chapter for the division within its ranks, particularly at the Lord’s Table itself. They are not waiting for one another. They gobble up everything before others can get a chance to participate! It was this abuse that eventually turned the Lord’s Supper from being part of an agape (love) feast to the Chic-let and shot glass of Welch’s it is today!

Paul is warning his readers here that if they approach the Lord’s Supper in an “It’s all about me” manner rather than an “It’s all about us and Jesus” manner, we’re heading down a dangerous path. He’s not advising them just to discern the physical body of Jesus in the bread; the context tells us that he’s also advising them to discern the metaphorical “body” of Christ—our fellow brothers and sisters.

How crazy is it that in an earnest attempt to obey this passage, we actually do the opposite of what Paul commands when we make the Lord’s Supper this private, introspective, individualistic affair!

THESE AREN’T MY CONFESSIONS

Also, most Protestant worship gatherings set aside no time for confession. This was a natural pushback against the trappings of many traditions that had become meaningless opportunities for abuse. But Scripture, again and again, shows us the importance of confessing our sins before God and before one another. A time of reflection and confession before the Lord’s Supper marks many of the “high church” Protestant liturgies. (Liturgy refers to the elements of a worship service.) For us in “low church” liturgies, we do not have such an opportunity.

But we need such an opportunity! And so we force upon the Lord’s Supper the confessional element of worship that it was never intended to represent. The misunderstanding of 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 reinforces this thinking. I’ve heard more than one person say, “I examined myself to see if I was worthy to take the Lord’s Supper this week, and I abstained because I didn’t feel I was.” Really? If that was my approach to the Lord’s Supper I would never participate. None of us are ever, on our own merit, worthy to sit at the table with Jesus. But Jesus, as our gracious host, invites us to the feast he’s prepared.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

So what do we gain if we approach the Lord's Supper in this way? Here are just a few blessings:

• A deeper awareness of Christ's presence.
• A joyful look forward to the future rather than only a somber glance back at the consequences of our sin.
• A more accurate picture of heaven, for the Lord's Supper is a preview of a coming attraction--the great wedding feast of the Lamb!
• An easing of doubt and fear as to one's worthiness to sit at the table with Jesus. It's not about you. It's about him and us.

YOUR MOVE

If I’ve sold you on the thought that the Lord’s Supper ought to be an interactive time marked by celebration, community, joy, thanksgiving, and recommitment as we experience a greater awareness of Jesus’ presence now while looking back to what he did for us and looking forward to what he will do for us, what steps can you take to make that thought a reality in practice?

If you feel your church leadership is open to discussing the issue, share with them your heart on the issue. Feel free to show them this blog post. I’d be glad to discuss it further and with greater detail with anyone interested.

You may not worship in a place where there is much freedom to express and encourage needed changes in how the Lord’s Supper is observed. If that’s the case, I encourage you to do the following: 

• Celebrate the Lord’s Supper in your home with your family and loved ones. Jesus did not set a limit on the frequency or the day. “As often as you do this” were his words.
• Use a substantial amount of bread and fruit of the vine.
• Break the bread during the event.
• Take it by intinction (dipping the bread into the cup).
• Focus on what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do.
• Play Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.”
• Wear party hats, blow up balloons, and throw confetti!

I’m only half-joking about those last two. The Lord’s Supper is serious. It does point back to Jesus’ sacrifice for us. But the Lord’s Supper is also a serious party. It points forward to the renewal of all things, consummated at the great wedding feast of the Lamb. And you and I, along with Jesus, get to experience it all in the right here and now.

If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend the following book:

Hicks, John Mark. Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper. Siloam Springs, AR; Leafwood  Publishers, 2003.

If you’re interested in acquiring a nice plate and chalice set, check out a local artist who has hooked both us and our church up—Soil Pottery.

Grace and peace.

Prayer for Sunday, May 24. 2020

St. Patrick

May the Strength of God pilot us.

May the Power of God preserve us.

May the Wisdom of God instruct us.

May the Hand of God protect us.

May the Way of God direct us.

May the Shield of God defend us.

May the Host of God guard us

Against the snares of the evil ones,

Against temptations of the world.

May Christ be with us!

May Christ be before us!

May Christ be in us,

Christ be over all!

May Thy Salvation, Lord,

Always be ours,

This day, O Lord, and evermore. Amen.

-          St. Patrick

Honest Prayer

"Commedia? Carnivale? Plague?" by Crazy Uncle Joe (Creative Commons)

Prayer is essentially the expression of our heart longing for love. It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, to be united with God as fully as possible. – Jeffrey D. Imbach, The Recovery of Love

Who am I when I pray?

As a devotee of Brennan Manning, I am aware of what he calls “the Imposter,” the false self that seemingly all of us constantly battle in our lives. The Imposter is our substitute, shield, and safety net. It promises to protect the hurt, vulnerable, and ashamed parts of us, the part that we fear others might one day discover and subsequently abandon and leave in isolation.

The ironic thing about the Imposter is that it delivers to us exactly what it promises to deliver us from. The false self we constantly roll out to others to protect who we really are ironically leaves our true selves in isolation. When concealed by the imposter, our true self neither knows others or is known by them. We desperately want to be accepted and loved by those around us, and we believe this defense mechanism will do the trick. But it does just the opposite! Worse, even if we are able to somehow manipulate others into loving our Imposter, it leaves our true selves feeling even less accepted and loved than before.

It is bad enough to experience this in our relationships with those around us. How much more so when we experience it in our relationship with God! Prayer, one of the most vital channels by which we deepen our love affair with God, can drive us farther away from him when we choose to wheel our Imposter out into the presence of God. We go to prayer in desperate need to experience God’s acceptance and love . . .

. . . but God can’t accept and love what isn’t there.

Gerald May put it this way:

I am seduced and enticed by a certain image of myself as a whole, holy, loving man who is well on his way to becoming free from attachments. When this image comes up in my prayer, it causes me to pose and posture; I find myself trying to make my prayer fit my image of how a holy man would pray. I no longer really invite God into my prayer. It becomes an act, a scene I play out on my own stage for my own edification. God is there in spite of this silliness, but, for the time being, I am unaware of that saving fact (Addiction and Grace, p. 100).

Thomas Merton echoes the fruitlessness of the false self:

This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy (from James Finlay’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p.34).

And Brennan Manning drives the point home:

Obviously, the impostor is antsy in prayer. He hungers for excitement, craves some mood-altering experience. He is depressed when deprived of the spotlight. The false self is frustrated because he never hears God’s voice. He cannot, since God sees no one there. Prayer is death to every identity that does not come from God. The false self flees silence and solitude because they remind him of death (Abba’s Child, p. 43).

Melancholy sets in when we consider that this might be as good as it gets with God. I think this is why so many of Jesus’ followers strive in, fail at, and give up on intimate prayer life. We’ve never been brave enough to come to God in complete spiritual nakedness. We fear to bring our true selves into the light of God’s presence, for then we will be known for who we truly are. And how could anyone love us for who we really are?

There is, of course, an alternative to a shallow and distant prayer life. And it is simply this: There is one who dares to love us for who really are. Jesus the Nazarene, and his Father who sent him to rescue us.

Oh I know, that’s old hat. We learned that in Sunday School. And I think if we took a lie detector test and were asked if we believed Jesus loves us, we’d pass with flying colors.

But most people will miss intimacy with God by about eighteen inches. That’s the average distance between a person’s brain and her heart. We’ve got the head knowledge pf God’s love, but we really haven’t let it trickle down into our heart where it can begin to transform us.

It is only we have truly incorporated into our fabric the reality that God loves us unconditionally—no matter our hurts, habits, and hangups—that  we can start to bring out our true selves, bit by bit, into the presence of God without fear of judgment or abandonment. And that’s when the real miracle of transformation begins: God begins to reshape us into a closer resemblance of how we should be.

It is the scandalous love of God that empowers us to take a fearless moral inventory of ourselves, shed every disguise, and enter into his presence with every wart and blemish exposed, hungry for his grace to cover our failures and his power to help us make us better imitators of him.

One of Brennan Manning’s favorite sayings was that God loves us as we are and not as we should be.

It’s only when that becomes heart knowledge that we can engage in honest prayer.

Honest prayer is engaging in conversation with God as we are, and not as we should be.

Grace and peace.

Sunday Prayer - Mothers Day, May 10, 2020

A Liturgy for a Moment of Frustration at a Child

 

Let me not react in this moment, O Lord,

in the blindness of my own emotion.

Rather give me—a fellow sinner—

wisdom to respond with a grace

that would shepherd my child’s heart

toward your mercies,

so equipping them

for the hard labors

of their own pilgrimage.

Amen.

 

Douglas Kaine McKelvey

 

Sunday Prayer, April 26, 2020

Francis of Assisi (1181-1226 CE)

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where the is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 

Amen

What Is Celebrate Recovery?

For many of us, the Christian walk is not a smooth road. There are a lot of speed bumps, ruts, and potholes—in the form of negative experiences due to our own actions, or the actions of others, or of just living in a broken world, These obstacles slow or stop our progress. There are also many billboards the Enemy has placed alongside the road, signs that advertise so many quick fixes to the quest for fulfillment: “Turn at the next exit for pleasures that will change your life!” “Spiritual palliative care on the cheap ahead!” “Stop! Turn around! You missed your exit to security through your will to power!” These unhealed wounds and empty substitutes (and countless others like them) are a part of what Celebrate Recovery has come to call our “hurts, hang-ups, and habits.”

I have got my share of those. I have got plenty of scars from childhood trauma, bad breaks, and self-inflicted wounds. My lack-of-dad issues and too-much-of-granddad issues can often trigger flight-or-fight responses when faced with difficult men. And do not get me started on my mom issues. During my walk, I have come to realize I often turn down the side-street of people-pleasing in search of the affirmation and accolades of others to satisfy my yearning for peace. I have also taken the exit to overeating to numb my anxiety or loneliness or hurt feelings. And I have pulled over on the shoulder to roll down my window and throw a few bucks at one of my favorite drug dealers—overspending—in order to get a quick high. And I will get a temporary fix but only end up feeling worse about myself and even farther away from God.

If you are like me, you could use help with all your personal baggage.

Birthed from the ministry of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, Celebrate Recovery (CR from here on out) provides the helping hand that so many of us need to get over our past, break free from our present, and head toward a brighter future. CR is a twelve-step program with a couple of major differences from typical twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

The first major difference is that CR makes no bones about who the program points to as the only true “Higher Power.” That person is the triune God of the Bible. Almost all the other programs of this nature keep their Higher Power vague and ambiguous, leaving he/she/its identity up to individual choice to be as inclusive as possible. While this is laudable, I have always wondered just how effective such programs were in leading people to a saving awareness of the truth. They might help you with your addition, but they might not point you to Jesus. CR is unapologetic being a Christian recovery ministry.

Second, CR does not discriminate when it comes to our habits, hurts, and hang-ups. The typical twelve-step program focuses in on one specific area of addiction—alcohol, pornography, or overeating, for example. CR, on the other hand, provides help and support for those wrestling with any pervasive temptation, struggle, or issue.

In addition to their own Christianized version of the twelve steps, CR also has eight principles which are based upon an interpretation of the Beatitudes, as well as the fuller and richer version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer, a staple of most recovery programs.

A typical CR meeting includes a large, unified group lesson and then small groups that are divided up usually by gender and by source of struggle. The unified lessons alternate between testimonies and studies on the steps and principles. As with other twelve-step programs, CR offers sponsors who can guide people through the steps. And, just like other twelve-step programs, CR demands that people in the program respect the privacy and anonymity of other people in the program. It is a safe place for people to come and to share their struggles and find support.

I am by no means an expert about CR. I have just started attending meetings. To be honest, I had been looking for something like this for quite some time. What I love most about CR is that it allows the local church an opportunity to be Jesus to broken and hurting people. All of us, no matter who we are, have hurts, hang-ups, and habits. All too often in the local church, we feel pressure to keep these struggles under wraps, to pretend I am okay, you are okay, we are all okay. Multiply that pressure a hundredfold if you are in vocational ministry. To admit weakness is to somehow admit being a lesser person, to being someone who is not a “good Christian,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. And so, our church gatherings can resemble something more like Pharisee conventions than places of healing for people who have been hurt by themselves, others, or the fallen world around them. CR provides an opportunity for wounded healers to approach other wounded people and offer help, with the eventual outcome that those they help in turn become wounded healers themselves.

I think Jesus would like his church to look a little bit more like that.

If you are interested in finding some help with your hurts, hang-ups, and habits in order to make more space for God in your heart and life, I encourage you to check CR out. You can find out more about them, including meetings in your area, at the link below.

Grace and peace.

Celebrate Recovery’s website: https://www.celebraterecovery.com/